P OL I T I C A L S T UD IES: 2005 VO L 53, 621–640

Intervention and Empire: John Stuart

Mill and International Relations
Carol A. L. Prager
University of Calgary

It is surprising that John Stuart Mill’s international thought, which focuses on intervention and
empire, has not attracted the attention it warrants. It is particularly surprising that Mill has been
largely overlooked by the English School, whose members acutely appreciate the contributions of
classical political philosophers to international discourse. Galvanised by his introspection on his
life, especially the impact of interference in his psychological and intellectual development, to his
analysis of the impact of Britain on India’s princely states and intervention in civil wars, Mill iden-
tified timeless problems intrinsic to international relations whilst profoundly appreciating the ten-
sions they generated in the form of perverse effects, unintended consequences and moral hazard.
Contemporary international relations are replete with examples of the unforeseen and unfore-
seeable developments that attend intervention and interference. If a concern of the English School
is the tormenting decisions that fall to statesmen, Mill provides an understanding of the consid-
erations that vastly complicate such decisions.

A virtue of the English School of international relations is its emphasis on the

way classical political thinkers deepen our understanding of enduring interna-
tional dilemmas.1 Today, there seem to be few issues more bedevilling than
international intervention and empire (or, in a contemporary permutation, nation-
building) or any classical thinker who thought about intervention and empire more
persistently, systematically and with greater intellectual powers than John Stuart
Mill. His account provides a deeply thoughtful understanding of why interventions
are problematic under the best of circumstances, and why interference so often
backfires.
Yet, by and large, Mill’s views on intervention and interference, pivotal to so many
vital issues in international relations, have not received the attention they warrant,
a surprising fact given his extraordinary stature. One reason might be Mill’s focus.
On the one hand, the English School has been most vigorously engaged with
the notion of international order, albeit often predicated on the principle of non-
interference (Mayall, 1998, p. 174). Other members of the English School have
recently advanced a cosmopolitan vision committed to universal human rights, and
governmental and ecological standards (Wheeler, 1996, p. 133). On the other hand,
whilst Mill was primarily concerned with intervention, he considered the shape of
international order obliquely, if at all. Another possible reason for his neglect is his
association with the East India Company, which provided his livelihood for virtu-
ally all his working life, evidence to some that he was a fervent supporter of empire,
until recently an unthinkable position. Notwithstanding, it is a tribute to Mill’s
acuity that he was drawn to intractable international dilemmas and that he
identified tensions that will always need to be respected. To the extent that Mill’s

© Political Studies Association, 2005.

Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
622 CAROL A. L. PRAGER

perspective is present in today’s discourse, it is largely in the writing of Michael

Walzer.2

Mill’s unique blend of romantic individualism and utilitarianism led him to pro-
found, arguably timeless, insights into the dynamics of international relations in a
world of states. In particular, his romantic individualism shaped his ideas about
self-determination and intervention, whilst his utilitarianism underwrote a conse-
quentialist approach according to which prudence trumped other considerations.
Scholars debate the particular mix of these elements in his thought (Zastoupil,
1994; Ryan, 1999). It is not necessary to enter that fray here. What I contend is
that Mill’s romantic individualism provided the framework for his thinking about
intervention, and to an extent not appreciated, influenced his views on imperial
interference in India. This, however, is not to deny the important role that utili-
tarianism played in the British project in India (Stokes, 1989; Souffrant, 2000) and
in Mill’s international thought. Indeed, these two elements should not be viewed
as discrete but intertwined.

Most importantly, Mill arrived at an understanding of intervention and interfer-

ence that he elaborated in the contexts of ‘civilised’ and ‘barbarous’ states. For the
purposes of this discussion, I intend intervention to mean overt intrusion to achieve
a specific, limited objective like offsetting counter-intervention in a typically
‘civilised’ country’s civil war, and interference to mean more far-reaching, penetrat-
ing involvement, including empire and what we call today nation-building, in the
internal affairs of a ‘barbarous’ or ‘semi-barbarous’ country. Although ‘interven-
tion’ and ‘interference’ are sometimes interchangeably used, there is a nuance in
their meanings3 and distinguishing them is analytically helpful. This distinction
emphasises that Mill saw intrusions in the two settings as distinct if not related
problems. ‘Interference’ also has the advantage of accommodating degrees of in-
volvement short of empire, especially important for contemporary international
relations. These two categories, however, do not imply that intervention was not,
in principle, possible in the latter (as in the case of humanitarian intervention), or
much less likely, interference in the former. Interference in civilised states, Mill
believed, was generally unjustified whilst intervention, as I use the term, rarely
sufficed in ‘barbarous’ and ‘semi-barbarous’ ones. Although different principles
were applied in each case, Mill’s understanding of the impact of intervention or
interference arguably was of a piece. The two types of intrusions represented dif-
ferent points on the same continuum extending from profound, systemic interfer-
ence into political and social arrangements of other states, as in the case of the
British Raj, to more limited, constrained meddling to achieve particular objectives.

Although what Mill meant by ‘barbarous’ was intuitively obvious to him, readers
have to piece together his meaning. For example, he maintained that barbarians’
lack of civilisation was revealed by the fact that they only understood force, did
not practice reciprocity and could not be trusted to tell the truth. Most damning,
they were not self-improving, presumably because of a lack of virtue. Cooperation
was not well developed in barbarous societies, and differences were often violently
settled. Another clue as to what Mill intended by ‘barbarous’ can arguably be found
in his discussion of the ‘primitive’, where he remarked that the ‘natural’, ‘primi-
tive’ situation of mankind ‘is a condition of more universal tyranny than any form
whatever of civilised life’ (Mill, 1867a, pp. 187–8). To Mill’s mind, the relationship
INTERVENTION AND EMPIRE 623

between barbarity (or primitiveness) and civilisation appeared to form another con-
tinuum that paralleled the one stretching from interference to intervention. ‘What-
ever be the characteristics of what we call savage life, the contrary of these, or
rather the qualities that which society puts on as it throws off these, constitute
civilisation’ (Mill, 1836, p. 52).
The extent of nationality played a critical part in differentiating civilised and
barbarous places. Civilised countries had a high degree of nationality, whereas
barbarous and semi-barbarous ones had little or none. In India, Mill found few
examples of nationality, which he identified with tradition and political continu-
ity, a stark contrast to the majority of Indian states that resulted from conquest. At
the same time, nationality was a broader concept than ethnicity. Whilst national-
ity generally followed ethnic lines, it was not four-square with them.
In what follows, I first address the wellspring of Mill’s ideas about intervention and
empire. I will argue that his romantic individualism led him to think of indivi-
duals and nations in similar terms, and that this view of nations, combined with a
consequentialist calculus, led him to anticipate the difficulties inherent in inter-
vention and interference, especially unintended consequences, perverse effects
and ‘moral hazards’. I then argue that although international politics has under-
gone many reconfigurations since Mill’s day, his preoccupations are also ours
because Mill (Kuperman, 2003, p. 141) saw in intervention and interference
thresholds beyond which one could expect the unpredictable and the counterpro-
ductive. Because Mill’s international ideas are outgrowths of his personal struggles,
I turn first to them.

The Crucible That Shaped Mill’s Views

One would be hard pressed to find a philosopher whose personal life loomed larger
in his thought than Mill. That said, the weight to be assigned to biographical con-
siderations in philosophical ideas is a contentious matter. Alan Ryan, wary of the
usefulness of this tack, cannot, in Mill’s case, help engaging in it himself, con-
ceding that in many areas of Mill’s thought ‘motive’ and ‘content’ are reveal-
ingly entangled (Ryan, 1975; 1991, p. 136). James Conant helpfully distinguishes
between ‘reductivism’ and ‘compartmentalism’, the former asserting that ‘biogra-
phy holds the secret to understanding the work of a philosopher’, and the latter
asserting ‘that the understanding of a philosopher’s life is irrelevant to an under-
standing of his work’ [emphasis in the original] (Conant, 2001, p. 17). If ever a
philosopher exemplified the reductivist approach, it is Mill. Certainly, many have
found him an irresistible and intriguing subject.4 More than other commentators
on Mill, I stress the centrality of his personal life as a source for his philosophi-
cal ideas and especially his international thought. ‘There is’, Mill affirmed, ‘no
doctrine really worth labouring at, either to construct or to inculcate, except the
Philosophy of Life’ (Mill, 1854, p. 362). This comment suggests a significant cross-
fertilisation between his reflections on his own life and the world beyond.

Psychological Coercion
Interference was a consuming preoccupation for Mill because of the way his char-
acter was formed in reaction to various forms of harassment. It was not easy in
624 CAROL A. L. PRAGER

the England of his day, he considered, to be a genius, which Mill came to believe
he was. ‘The few great minds which this country has produced’, he complained,
‘have been formed in spite of nearly everything which could be done to stifle their
growth’ (Packe, 1954, p. 203). What was true of genius, in general, was especially
true of Mill. His personal life involved the drive for autonomy against various
tyrannies. His father, James Mill, who was typically exacting, unhappy and short-
tempered, imposed the first tyranny. From the age of three, the younger Mill,
famously, was compelled to learn Greek and subjected to the most rigorous edu-
cation. Although undoubtedly a prodigy, Mill felt he could not satisfy his father’s
standards. In observations later edited out of the first draft of his Autobiography,
Mill wrote:
... [B]oth as a boy & as a youth I was incessantly smarting under [my
father’s] severe admonitions. ... He could not endure stupidity, nor feeble
& lax habits, in whatever manner displayed, & I was perpetually excit-
ing his anger by manifestations of them. From the earliest time I can
remember he used to reproach me, & most truly, with a general habit of
inattention; owing to which he said, I was constantly acquiring bad
habits, & never breaking myself of them; was constantly forgetting what
I should remember, & judging & acting like a person devoid of common
sense; & which would make me, he said, grow up a mere oddity, looked
down upon by everybody, & unfit for all the common purposes of life ...
(Stillinger, 1961, pp. 179–80).
Early on, Mill became torn between idealisations of his father and Jeremy
Bentham, and his disaffection with their utilitarian philosophy. The extent of this
conflict was underscored by two mental crises. The first occurred in 1826 when
Mill rebelled against utilitarianism, which he concluded had no place for virtue,
altruism, poetry, deep feelings or self-directed growth – the things that mattered
most to him. In his correspondence with Thomas Carlyle, he revealed his despair:
‘[T]here is no mind-physician who can prescribe for me ... who could help whoso-
ever is helpable; I can do nothing for myself, and others can do nothing for me;
all the advice that can be given (and that is not easily taken) is, not to beat against
the bars of my iron cage’ [emphasis in the original] (Elliot, 1910, Volume I, p. 38).
Although he never completely turned his back on utilitarianism, this mutinous
moment arguably had a significant implicit impact on his international thought.
The second mental crisis occurred around the time of his father’s death in 1836.
This crisis seemed to have been resolved by Mill’s encounter with a passage in Jean-
François Marmontel’s Memoires, which not only helped him to accept his ambiva-
lence towards his father but involved a poignant recognition that the younger Mill
was not a machine, that he was capable of deep feelings and that he could now
assume his mature role in the world (Ryan, 1974, p. 31).
The search for authenticity, indeed, an understanding of what it comprised, was a
consuming preoccupation for Mill. Aesthetic responses, especially, emanated from
an individual’s essential core. Amongst all the arts, music most expressed authen-
ticity ‘[b]ecause, [it] excites intenser emotions than any other art, [doing] so by
going to the fountain of feeling, without passing through thought. It can thus
be carried to any degree of perfection without intellect ...’ (Mill, 1854, p. 364).
INTERVENTION AND EMPIRE 625

Ultimately, Mill thought, ‘[m]uch feeling and much thought make the hero or
heroine’ (Mill, 1854, p. 377). It followed that an individual’s activities should never
be confined to intellectual work because it tended to suppress the emotions (Mill,
1854, p. 373).

Other Sources of Oppression

Still other tyrannies were gossip and perceived social ostracism triggered by his
unconventional relationship with the, at first, married Harriet Taylor. Taylor, whom
Mill met in 1830 and eventually married in 1851, became the cornerstone of his
existence. Mill’s diary entry for 3 February 1854 vented his exasperation with
intrusive social pressures that had haunted their relationship:
How many are there of the ways of the world, which, far from having
been exaggerated by satirists, no satirist has dared to colour as highly as
every-day fact would warrant. How far, for example, the stretch of inven-
tion in the way of malicious gossip transcends anything which we ever
should or even could dream of the possibility of, until taught by experi-
ence ... [T]he most insignificant particulars in one’s daily life, unneces-
sarily revealed, are very likely to be made the ground work of a pile of
medisance as mountain-like, and the top of it as distant from the founda-
tion, as the Tower of Babel itself (Mill, 1854, p. 366).
For the rest of his life, Mill was drawn to France because of the greater social
freedom he experienced there.
Although Mill saw Taylor as his teacher, and stood in awe of her artistic sensibi-
lities, it is conceivable that she constituted yet another tyranny. The fact that he
deferred to her strong views even when he thought her wrong, and that he once
again became productive and expansive after her death in 1858 suggest that their
relationship might have been in its way oppressive too. Implicitly recognising the
isolation he experienced in this relationship, he said she was both ‘his incompara-
ble friend’ as well as ‘his only friend’ (Himmelfarb, 1962, passim).
Necessity, the coerciveness of internal and external factors in an individual’s life,
crowding out space left for individual choice, was another conceivable source of
oppression. Mill sketched out a science called ethology, which is concerned with the
formation of character, and took into account psychology, on the one hand, and
a vast range of external factors, including the circumstances into which one
was born, historical forces and so forth, on the other. Ethology was to consist of
mid-range laws, mediating between inner and outer influences. [M]ankind’, Mill
observed, ‘have not one universal character, but there exist universal laws of the
Formation of Character’ (Mill, 1843, p. 564).
A different kind of necessity was imposed by Mill’s work for the East India
Company. He would have much preferred a life in politics, barely mentioned his
work at India House in his Autobiography and towards the end of his life stoically
noted that he had given ‘enough of [his] life to India’ (Mill, 1873, p. 169). It was,
however, characteristic of Mill to turn vices into virtues, and he used part of his
time at India House to consider the impact of British interference in India. Thus,
626 CAROL A. L. PRAGER

Mill’s intellectual development was intertwined with his experience at India House
(Zastoupil, 1994, p. 130). There and elsewhere, Mill never predicated his actions
on their acceptability, but bravely thrust himself forward in unpopular positions,
first his defiance of convention in his relationship with Taylor and later in posi-
tions he took with respect to the British Raj, where he intellectually satisfied
himself at the cost of alienating everyone else. Ultimately, he stood alone, despised
by imperialists and democrats alike (Ryan, 1999, p. 16).

Parallels between the Individual and Nation State

No adequate account of Mill’s views on intervention and empire can overlook the
fact that he viewed the autonomy of individuals and states through the same prism.
As is often true of a radical, or, as he labelled himself, a ‘neo-radical’, he explicitly
and implicitly compared the principles of personal conduct with those of states.
That individuals and states should be subject to similar moral constraints struck
him as axiomatic. A passage in ‘A Few Words on Non-Intervention’ illustrates the
assimilation of nation state to individual:
England is thus exhibited as a country where most distinguished men
are not ashamed to profess, as politicians, a rule of action which no one,
not utterly base, could endure to be accused of as the maxim by which
he guides his private life; not to move a finger for others unless he sees
private advantage in it ... (Mill, 1859a, p. 400).
This is an especially intriguing comment from a liberal economist who well under-
stood that private motives could produce public gain. Indeed, one senses that here
Mill is identifying with England, which he describes as the epitome of altruism but
‘held up to obloquy ... [for its] egoism and selfishness ...’ (Mill, 1859a, p. 397) as
Mill felt his own motivations at many points in his life might have been miscon-
strued. Reinhold Niebuhrs’s contrast of ‘moral man, immoral society’, sanctioning
different moral codes for each, would have been anathema to Mill (Niebuhr, 1960).
Mill’s notions about nation states emerged from his ideas about the lives of authen-
tic individuals. This comparison appears, for example, in his claim in ethology that
the same logical apparatus could be applied to the analysis of the formation of indi-
vidual and national character (Mill, 1843, p. 567). Further, Mill used the same jus-
tification for ruling out interference with individuals and nations. As Mill put it,
‘[T]he strongest of all the arguments against the interference of the public with
purely personal conduct, is that when it does interfere, the odds are that it inter-
feres wrongly, and in the wrong place’3 (Mill, 1859b, p. 92). In an 1865 letter to
James Beal, Mill affirmed the principle of non-intervention in civilised states
‘because one country, even with the best of intentions, has no chance of properly
understanding the affairs of another’. States, like individuals, had their own inner-
directed journeys to self-realisation. In both cases, the end results also had a
utilitarian justification that was the propagation of diversity and ultimately of
breakthroughs that could contribute to the progress of mankind.
Not only could outsiders not fathom what was good for other nationalities or indi-
viduals, but the individual or nation state itself often did not know until the facts
were arrayed before them. Mill exhorted:
INTERVENTION AND EMPIRE 627

Let us place our trust for the future, not in the wisdom of mankind, but
in something far surer – the force of circumstances – which makes men
see that, when it is near at hand, which they could not foresee when it
was at a distance, and which so often and so unexpectedly makes the
right course, in a moment of emergency, at once, the easiest and the most
obvious (Mill, 1831, p. 20).

An especially illuminating comparison involves a poignancy surrounding roman-

tic individualism in states and individuals. In the latter case, Mill referred to the
humbling experience of trial and error, confessing in an 1833 letter to Carlyle that
his depression had been the source ‘for all the most valuable of such insight as I
have into the most important matters’ (Elliot, 1910, p. 42). Analogous shared expe-
riences helped shape nationality including: ‘identity of political antecedents; pos-
session of a national history, and consequent community of recollections; collective
pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret, connected with the same incidents in
the past’ (Mill, 1861, p. 308). Mill, however, also warned against sentimental
excesses, arguing that culture is not destiny and rational choice was also possible
for states (Mill, 1861, p. 18).

Experiments were also conducted in India, although at a distance under far from
ideal circumstances, by the officials of the East India Company, ‘a Government [of
foreigners] which has had all its knowledge to acquire, by a slow process of study
and experience, and often by a succession of failures (generally, however, leading
to ultimate success)’ (Mill, 1858, p. 155). The proximity of publication of On Liberty
and Other Essays (Mill, 1859b) to that of ‘A Few Words on Non-Intervention’ (Mill,
1859a) and Considerations on Representative Government (Mill, 1861) is also striking.
Considerations on Representative Government contains some of Mill’s most con-sidered
justifications for the East India Company, suggesting that he thought of interfer-
ence in India and intervention in nation states as variations of the same
problem.

Another fascinating aspect of Mill’s analyses of the autonomy of individuals and

nation states is his revealing choice of words. Regarding the individual’s develop-
ment, Mill writes: ‘A person whose desires and impulses are his own – are the
expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own
culture [emphasis supplied] – is said to have a character’ (Mill, 1859b, p. 67), an
implicit analogy with nation states. In a famous letter he penned in 1866 to John
Morley setting forth the circumstances in which he would permit succession in
Indian states in the absence of heirs, Mill stated:

Wherever there are really native states, with a nationality & historical tra-
ditions and feelings, which is emphatically the case with the Rajpoot
states, there I would on no account take advantage of any failure of heirs
to put an end to them. But all the Mahomedan ... & most of the Mahratta
kingdoms are not of home growth, but created by conquest not a century
ago ... [emphasis supplied] (Elliot, 1910, Volume II, p. 65).

This wording can be juxtaposed with a passage about the oppression of the cus-
tomary that gradually extinguishes the individual’s authenticity
628 CAROL A. L. PRAGER

... until by dint of not following their own nature, they have no nature
to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become
incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally
without opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own (Mill,
1859b, p. 68).

‘Nationality ... [p]ractically of the First Importance’5

Mill maintained:
[An] essential condition which has existed in all durable societies is a
strong and active principle of nationality. [The people] shall feel that they
are one people, that their lot is cast together, that evil to any of their
fellow-countrymen is evil to themselves, and that they cannot selfishly
free themselves from their share of any inconvenience by severing the
connection’ (Mill, 1840, p. 151).
The counterpart to individuality, full-blown nationality, provided the rationale for
ruling out intervention. A people displaying true nationality, in contrast with semi-
barbarous and barbarous people, were entitled to be free from intervention. The
autonomy that was underwritten by nationality took the form of national self-
determination, and it was this process to which outsiders were obliged to defer.
England, France, Holland and Switzerland exhibited nationality, whereas Germany
and Italy did not (Mill, 1840, p. 153). Moreover, free representative institutions
presupposed the presence of nationality. In the light of contemporary history where
the Austro–Hungarian Empire ruled much of Europe, and the Ottomans and
Russians held sway close by, Mill thought that it was unrealistic to expect nation-
alities to happily coexist. Although it would be a fine thing for people to transcend
nationality, it was naïve to expect nationalities to treat each other even-handedly.

Intervention: ‘[T]hat Nice Question, the Line that Separates the

Highest Right from the Commencement of Wrong’6
Intervention in civilised states was a grievous matter, and Mill undertook to pre-
cisely specify the few circumstances in which intervention was morally permis-
sible. What morality meant to Mill in this context is somewhat elusive. Moral
certainly meant principled, but beyond that Mill seemed to have in mind a process
rather than a deontology. Ethics and politics were alike, he held, in that, ‘What we
require to be taught [on those subjects] is to be our own teachers. [They are sub-
jects] on which we have no masters to follow; each must explore for himself, and
exercise an independent judgment’ (Mill, 1867b, p. 244).
The fact that Mill’s arguments on intervention were based on morality rather than
on international law is worth noting. Moral considerations were, for Mill, of a
higher order than legal ones. Commenting on public disillusionment with recent
violations of European treaties, he observed that ‘our indignation is hot or cold
according to circumstances quite foreign to the morality of the case; and is likely
to continue so until the morality of such cases has been placed on a firmer and
INTERVENTION AND EMPIRE 629

more clearly defined basis than it has yet received’, a service that Mill believed he
had provided for intervention in ‘A Few Words on Non-Intervention’ (Mill, 1859a).
The broad context of this important essay was Mill’s sympathy with countries like
Austrian-ruled Hungary, which had failed to secede from the Austro–Hungarian
Empire because of Russia’s counter-intervention. In 1849, Mill had begun to
develop his views on intervention in the context of French foreign policy, applaud-
ing Alphonse de Lamartine’s statement of the new French government’s commit-
ment to judiciously support assertions of nationality, reserving for itself the
judgement whether ‘the time fixed by providence for the resurrection of a nation-
ality unjustly blotted out from the map ha[d] arrived’ (Mill, 1849, p. 342). If such
policies ran afoul of the negative view on intervention of customary international
law, so much the worse for international law. Like all other aspects of civilisation,
it was expected to progress by challenging outdated norms. But Mill saw progress
in a general acceptance of the principle that when conflicts within or between two
factions or two states are so prolonged, they result in conditions ‘repugnant to
humanity or to the general interest’, outsiders may intervene, thus upholding a
right of humanitarian intervention (Mill, 1849, p. 346). Accordingly, he supported
European intervention in the conflicts between Belgium and Holland, Greece and
Turkey and Turkey and Egypt.

Empire: The ‘Unimproving’7

The overarching moral duty not to intervene that Mill propounded in ‘A Few
Words on Non-Intervention’ (Mill, 1859a) was qualified by four exceptions. In
those few exceptions, intervention (or interference) was a moral right, circum-
scribed by prudential considerations, arising from the need to protect the integrity
of self-determination. First, a state could intervene to counter another country’s
intervention in a civil war, protecting the integrity of the process of self-determi-
nation. As Mill put it, [i]ntervention to enforce non-intervention is always right-
ful, always moral, if not always prudent’ (Mill, 1859a, p. 412). Secondly, a country
could interpose itself when widespread atrocities were being committed. Thirdly,
intervention might be permissible in a prolonged civil war to reduce suffering. Mill
ruled out other intrusions, no matter how well intended they might be, because
no amount of intervention could assure the survival of liberty. If a people could
not, or would not, seize independence from their oppressors in the first place, they
were unlikely to be able to hold on to it. Although states had a moral right to inter-
vene in these exceptional circumstances, they were not obliged to do so. Prudence
reigned supreme, a judgement that emphasised the part utilitarianism continued
to play in Mill’s international theory. Prudential considerations prevailed in his
views on intervention in Poland and Denmark.
The fourth exception grew out of situations where a neighbour’s barbarous prac-
tices had such a serious impact on a state’s interests that it was forced to put an
end to them. Mill saw that empires could be acquired by default:
A civilised government cannot help having barbarous neighbors: when
it has, it cannot always content itself with a defensive position, one of
630 CAROL A. L. PRAGER

mere resistance to aggression. After a longer or shorter interval of

forbearance, it either finds itself obliged to conquer them, or to assert
so much authority over them, and so to break their spirit, that they
gradually sink into a state of dependence upon itself; and when that
time arrives, they are indeed no longer formidable to it, but it has had
so much to do with setting up and pulling down their governments,
and they have grown so accustomed to leaning on it, that it has
become morally responsible for all evil it allows them to do (Mill, 1859a,
p. 407).
Because barbarous and semi-barbarous countries lacked the prerogatives of nation-
ality, interference in them was another matter.
Although Mill spent virtually his entire working life at the East India Company, he
was not intellectually a wholehearted supporter of empire. Known as ‘the great
supporter of Indian [that is, princely] independence in the East India House’, he
tended to favour restraint in interfering with Indian politics, religion and culture
(Moore, 1999, p. 88). This is not to say that Mill was not a vigorous defender of
British interests, but that the pursuit of interests did not exhaust Britain’s obliga-
tions; he maintained that imperial rule was ‘the highest moral trust which can
devolve upon a nation’ (Mill, 1861, p. 346). Essential to Mill’s justification of the
Raj was the fact that the East India Company shielded India from any crass British
political interests.
Indeed, Mill considered the government of one country by another an oxymoron,
and an arrangement that could be justified only as preparation for independence.
‘The government of a people by itself has a meaning and a reality, but such a thing
as government of one people by another does not and cannot exist’ (Mill, 1861,
p. 349). Because it was inevitable that barbarous people would be ruled by despots
and that ‘under native despotism, a good despot is a rare and transitory accident’
(Mill, 1861, p. 346), the best civilised conquerors could provide was an enlight-
ened despotism.
Mill’s writings on India, especially his dispatches for the East India Company, where
he served as chief correspondent in the Department of Native States (later the
Political Department), complement his more familiar views on international inter-
vention. They also pre-dated his writing on international intervention, and helped
shape his views on intervention, as his thought on interference in India had been
shaped to a significant degree by his personal odyssey.
Positioned to notice the impacts of various kinds of British interference on formally
independent states, Mill reacted to events in India with particular decisions, and
sometimes, general formulations of the assumptions that governed them. As a
systematic observer of causal relations, he carefully developed rationales for his
policies, generally discovered through trial and error. Mill opined:
... [I]n government as in all other departments of human agency, almost
all principles which have been durable were first suggested by observa-
tion of some particular case, in which the general laws of nature acted
in some new or previously unnoticed combination of circumstances
(Mill, 1861, p. 364).
INTERVENTION AND EMPIRE 631

The result was ‘better arrangements than our wisdom would ever have devised’
(Mill, 1861, p. 365).

It is unsurprising that to a significant extent, Mill’s interest in India was intellec-

tual. Indeed, ultimately he claimed that ‘... it has been the destiny of the govern-
ment of the East India Company, to suggest the true theory of the government of
a semi-barbarous dependency by a civilised country ...’ (Mill, 1861, p. 364). But
Mill knew that he operated in uncharted territory. Providing good government for
a dependent people ‘[was] by no means so well understood as the conditions of
good government in a people capable of governing themselves. We may even say
that it is not understood at all’ (Mill, 1861, p. 347). It was clear to Mill, however,
that such a government’s officials had to be thoroughly acquainted with the history
and culture of the people it ruled and empathise with their wishes and interests.
With all the goodwill in the world, this was a daunting task.

Foreigners do not feel with the people. They cannot judge, by the light
in which a thing appears to their own minds, or the manner in which it
affects their feelings, how it will affect the feelings or appear to the minds
of the subject population. What a native of the country, of average prac-
tical ability, knows as it were by instinct, they have to learn slowly, and,
after all, imperfectly, by study and experience (Mill, 1861, p. 348).

Influenced by his study of Coleridge, Mill demonstrated his capacity to empathise

with the population of Kathiawad, for example, by respecting the importance it
attached to political allegiance, working with local leaders instead of replacing them
(Zastoupil, 1988, p. 51).

Although Mill thought that barbarous and semi-barbarous states did not possess
real nationality, his thinking about interference in India was affected by the degree
to which princely states exhibited national or native elements such as political
continuity and shared religions and customs. He insisted that these features should
be seriously taken by the East India Company, and maintained, for instance,
that Hindu literary works were ‘authentic and interesting products of the human
mind’ (Harris, 1964, p. 187). Just as civilised states expressing national self-
determination should not be intervened in except in extraordinary circumstances,
Indian states with discernible native roots, such as dynasties that existed before the
Company appeared on the scene, possessed some degree of nationality and were
entitled to deference (Moore, 1999, p. 88). As Mill’s 1866 letter to Morley reveals,
Mill applied this principle in the matter of lapse: A state could be absorbed by
British-ruled India where there was no heir, but Mill held that where some degree
of nationality was present the naming of a successor by the princely state should
be permitted.

Notwithstanding, Mill was not one of the great orientalists of his time, not always
satisfying his own high standards for knowledge of Indian society and culture,
indeed sometimes demonstrating, as Eric Stokes put it, ‘the fantastic authority
which [Mill] was prepared to grant to the philosophic intelligence’ (Stokes, 1989,
p. 53). Mill had imbibed Indian history whilst proofreading his father’s highly prej-
udiced The History of British India (Mill, 1975), and the younger Mill could be sweep-
ingly dismissive of entire civilisations (Majeed, 1999).
632 CAROL A. L. PRAGER

Perverse Effects, Unintended Consequences and

Moral Hazards
Mill’s most profound rationale for limiting intervention and interference was
twofold: meddling disrupted the process of national self-determination and often
had unpredictable and profoundly perturbing effects. Mill knew from first-hand
experience that even India, which, he believed, had been created more by con-
quest than by national impulses, abounded with opportunities for good intentions
of the Raj to go astray. In a review of Henry Maine’s study of Indian villages,
Mill elaborated on some of the policy perplexities England encountered, noting ‘...
how great injustice may be, and has been, caused by the fact [the British Govern-
ment’s] mere appearance on the scene destroys the balance of existing social relations
...’ [emphasis supplied] (Mill, 1871, p. 227). He applauded Maine’s observation
that ‘when an official appointed by a powerful Government acts upon the loose
constitution of a primitive society, he crushes down all other classes, and exalts
that to which he himself belongs’. Maine’s insight pointed to one especially destruc-
tive unintended consequence. Once a ‘civilised’ state had militarily defeated a
‘barbarous’ one, thus becoming responsible for the latter’s defence, the defeated
government could count on the colonial power to protect it from its often dis-
gruntled, rebellious population. James Mill, who had few qualms about inter-
ference, recognised that ‘[t]his unfortunate intermediate state between British
government and native, [could be] filled up with nothing but abomination ...’
(Moore, 1999, p. 91).

One way to minimise corruption in native states was the Company’s assumption
of revenue collection. But the seemingly straightforward decision as to whom to
designate as revenue collectors in Bengal, Mill lamented, had its own unintended
consequences, such as practically dispossessing peasants of traditional land rights
(Mill, 1871, p. 222). Indeed, Mill conceded, Britain’s policies caused

... irreparable mischief, by blindly introducing the English idea of

absolute property in land into a country where it did not exist ... and
into which its introduction could only be effected by trampling the rights
of all except some one of the classes which, by the customs of the
country, shared among them the right of using and disposing of the soil
(Mill, 1871, p. 222).

Mill concluded that British ignorance of Indian conditions and of their own history
was to blame. He approvingly cited Maine, who claimed, ‘What practically has to
be determined is the unit of society for agrarian purposes; and you find that
in determining it, you determine everything, and give its character finally to the
entire political and social constitution of the province’ (Mill, 1871, p. 226). Thus,
Mill believed that even semi-barbarous political communities possessed a coher-
ence that should be disturbed only with serious justification and great circum-
spection. Mill conceded that British support for native rulers in India discouraged
the emergence of more capable rulers (Ryan, 1999, p. 5). A perverse effect that
Mill never anticipated was how much harder unifying India was to become because
of its division into directly ruled and native, semi-autonomous states (Moore, 1999,
p. 107).
INTERVENTION AND EMPIRE 633

Mill’s Timeliness
Mill’s sense that he was harassed by various forms of psychological and social
oppressions led him to a view of the autonomous, authentic individual, struggling
for the highest form of fulfillment and usefulness to others. This awareness was
protean in that it was self-evident to Mill that a similar analysis should be applied
to the nation state. It, too, must be free from intervention to embark on its
self-determined future, profiting from mistakes and building on triumphs, usually
discovered when confronted with unalterable facts. Mill’s romantic idealism
especially sensitised him to perverse effects, unintended consequences and moral
hazard, all of which rendered intrusions into the lives of individuals and nations
generally unpredictable, confounding and counterproductive (Zastoupil, 1988,
p. 40). This was the case not only because of the large number of variables and
vectors at play, but especially because self-determination had its own compelling
rationale, the disregard of which eliminated the only meaningful source of coher-
ence available, attenuated, however, in the case of the barbarous and semi-
barbarous. Mill’s approach led to profound insights about the inherent tensions
surrounding intervention and interference that will always have to be reckoned
with.
Today, the acuity of Mill’s understanding of intervention and interference is
reflected in both the discourse of international relations as well as contentious
policy issues surrounding intervention, nation-building and ‘empire’. Whilst in the
1990s, the pros and cons of intervention and interference were debated in a rela-
tively disinterested way, more recently, intervention and interference have been
embraced to the extent that they advance one’s political agenda, whether it be a
‘responsibility to protect’, or some other project. New questions about pre-emptive
intervention in the war against terrorism and the need to control the spread of
nuclear weapons are bringing intervention to the forefront again, albeit in a new
light. The offhand way in which diplomats and commentators discuss ‘regime
change’ would have amazed Mill with its presumption.
The 1990s represent a sea-change not only in the central importance intervention,
and especially, broader interference such as ‘empire’, state- and nation-building
have assumed in international politics but also in their treatment in international
discourse. Intervention became the crucial practical, intellectual and ethical issue
of the 1990s. Even before the US–British coalition’s intrusion in Iraq, however,
many observers had become more impressed by intervention’s difficulties than its
promise, and governments had increasingly lacked the political will to involve
themselves in the calamities of other states. Even humanitarian interventions
seemed much less straightforward enterprises to stop mass human rights atrocities
than hopelessly complex exercises in which intervening powers became enmeshed
in local politics (Kennedy, 2004). Today, the gargantuan, bellowing creature in the
room that cannot be ignored is Iraq, powerfully articulating better than any argu-
ment, the tensions pervading intervention and interference, on the one hand, and
self-determination, on the other, as well as stupefying perverse effects, unintended
consequences and moral hazards. Michael Eisenstadt and others have catalogued
the numerous misadventures resulting from the US-led coalition’s war to depose
Saddam Hussein (Eisenstadt, 2004). In Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of
634 CAROL A. L. PRAGER

American Empire (Johnson, 2004), Chalmers Johnson argued that the war against
terrorism has perversely increased the terrorist threat. Commenting on the moral
and legal quandary left by the war against Iraq, David Kennedy has bemoaned the
fact that ‘we no longer share a professional culture of interpretation which could
sustain confidence that we could differentiate a creative from an abusive reading
of terms like “self-defense” or “just war” ’(Kennedy, 2004, p. 335). It had been
Mill’s aim to provide the necessary moral and intellectual clarity for the issues sur-
rounding intervention and interference.
Representing the Millian perspective today, Walzer insists that whether or not to
intervene ‘should always be a hard question’ (Walzer, 1995, p. 53). He cautions
that ‘intervention is a political and military process ... [and] subject to the com-
promises and tactical shifts that politics and war require’ (Walzer, 2002, p. 36).
Most importantly, Walzer holds that as much as we might wish it otherwise, ‘[a]
pure moral will doesn’t exist in political life’ (Walzer, 2002, p. 32). This is a sober-
ing thought in the face of exhortations of ‘a responsibility to protect’ (International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, 2001) and claims of global
standards for local governance. Walzer steers clear of the conceptual perplexities
of national self-determination, holding that the reference point to which inter-
ventions must defer is ‘local legitimacy’ (Walzer, 2002, p. 34). To be exempt
from intervention or interference, regimes should not have to satisfy outsiders’
checklists; it is enough for them to be ‘non-murderous’ (Walzer, 2002, p. 36). Lea
Brilmayer supports a similar conception, ‘communal integrity’, noting that it
might shield states from intervention in the face of some human rights violations
(Brilmayer, 1994, p. 150).
The emergence of a new literature on ‘empire’ is an especially startling develop-
ment. Empire had been thought to be a time-bound phenomenon that, after the
middle of the twentieth century, had been relegated to history books. During the
cold war, the USA and the Soviet Union were accused of operating de facto empires,
but full-fledged empires were seen as bad things firmly in the past. In 1990, Robert
H. Jackson wrote that ‘[t]he weakness or backwardness of countries is no longer
a justification for conquest or colonialism’, and that external legitimacy rules out
paternalism (Jackson, 1990, p. 23). But if one suspects that the distinction between
nation-building and empire lacks substance, it is evident that today we are back
in the imperial business, leading one to wonder whether something like empire,
its perplexities notwithstanding, is not, as Mill claimed, at times an unavoidable
feature of international relations.
Indeed, a renewed, often rhetorical, interest in empire in one form or another can
be found across the ideological spectrum. On the cosmopolitan left, there are
exhortations to ‘protect’ the populations of states in which civil wars rage or in
which institutions have imploded. In both cases, the appropriate antidote is typi-
cally nation- or peace-building. At the same time, Nicholas Wheeler and others
propose an overarching duty to intervene or interfere. Wheeler challenges state
practice as a criterion of legitimacy on the ground that ‘it makes [humanitarian
intervention] a right but not a duty’, precisely Mill’s and Walzer’s position (Wheeler,
2000, p. 299).
On the right and in the middle of the ideological spectrum, where there is more
skepticism about intervention, there tends nevertheless to be more support, for
INTERVENTION AND EMPIRE 635

instance, for the US-led coalition’s intervention in Iraq. Some like Niall Ferguson
and others overtly call for a reconsideration of empire, offering Millian justi-
fications (Ferguson et al., 2003). Russell Mead and Jeffrey Herbst call for ‘re-
colonialisation’ in Africa, a project undertaken by the British in Sierra Leone,
Herbst maintaining that the recognition of sovereignty may be withdrawn and that
it should be possible to ‘de-certify’ sovereign states that are obviously ‘dysfunc-
tional’ (Herbst, 2003). Roger Scruton notes that empires have accomplished the
most successful peacekeeping whilst others draw attention to other benefits
(D’Souza, 2002; Boot, 2003; Kurtz, 2003; Scruton, 2003, p. 11).

In practical terms, the practice of the United Nations Security Council is increas-
ingly blurring the distinction between failed states and states where humanitarian
intervention may be justified (Wolfrum, 2002, p. 109), thus providing a slippery
slope towards supporting more international interference in a wider variety of
cases. Supporters of intervention and interference point to increased interdepen-
dence and the greater danger that violence in one place will spill over into others
(Hoffmann, 1996). No doubt, there is truth to this claim. One has only to think of
the still unfolding aftermath of the Rwandan genocide in neighboring countries.
But interdependence should not become a mantra; the actual impact of domestic
crises on neighbors needs to be assessed in each case.

Although in optimistic moments, Mill believed that he was learning how to effec-
tively and benevolently interfere in India’s princely states, there is little evidence
that our knowledge has deepened since. In Kosovo, considered an example of suc-
cessful intervention and peace-building, there is little to show for the blood and
treasure expended by outsiders: Ethnic tensions have not been managed and there
is little security (Rosenbaum, 2003). Indeed, recent appraisals of attempts at nation-
building following intervention have concluded that the track record of such
projects does not inspire confidence (Ottaway, 2002; Minxin and Kaspar, 2003).
The few successful cases, post-World War II Germany and Japan, were the least
daunting.

Arguably, our understanding of these matters has not advanced because we have
not assigned the appropriate weight to the profoundly perturbing and essentially
unforeseeable perverse effects, unintended consequences and moral hazards beset-
ting all forms of interference and intervention that Mill appreciated so keenly.
Highly relevant today, for example, is William Odom’s caution that the premature
introduction of democracy thwarts the achievement of liberal, constitutional gov-
ernment (Odom, 2004, p. 34).

Mill believed that successful intervention entailed a comprehensive understanding

of cause-and-effect relationships amongst relevant factors and participants that
were, in principle, unattainable for outsiders. The Somalian debacle illustrates this
dilemma. Mark Bowden concluded that success presupposed a grasp of facts on the
ground that the Americans could not have possessed:

The mistakes made in Mog weren’t because people in charge didn’t care
enough, or weren’t smart enough. It’s too easy to dismiss errors by
blaming the commanders. It assumes there exists a cadre of brilliant offi-
cers who know all the answers before the questions are even asked
(Bowden, 1999, p. 418).
636 CAROL A. L. PRAGER

Mill was especially sensitive to the danger of moral hazard in India, an outcome
exemplified by the USA and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s toleration of
Bosnian abuse of safe havens in using them to launch attacks. When the warring
parties ignored their interveners’ demand to negotiate, the latter nonetheless
protected them from the repercussions of their refusal (Boyd, 1995, p. 23), just as
corrupt Indian officials could depend on the British to protect them from upris-
ings. Perversely, mass human rights abuses can be traced to American Balkan
policies (Simes, 2003, p. 96).

At the same time, more restrained interventions, and interventions in international

politics today are likely to be half-measures, can make matters worse. For example,
diplomatic threats of military action or sanctions without the requisite political will
to follow through led to horrific violence in Kosovo, Rwanda and East Timor
(Kuperman, 2001, pp. 110–2). There is a further paradox. Whilst Mill and Walzer
would agree on the need to keep interventions brief, the emphasis on the earliest
possible departure of intervening powers may cause antagonists to wait out the
intervention before resuming their hostilities. Under these circumstances, it might
be better to stay out in the first place. The overriding significance of nationality
was all too evident in Yugoslavia, and the centrality of working out a conception
of ‘local legitimacy’ is evident today in Iraq. Taking up the Millian theme of
restraint, Marina Ottaway comments on African interventions:

As alarm mounts over these new African wars, it is time for the
international community to step back, recognise that forty years of post-
colonial intervention have often done more harm than good, and for
once do little – not out of indecision, but because it is the most helpful
thing to do (Ottaway, 1999, p. 1).

Ultimately, all too often only success, typically bloody, succeeds. As R. J. Vincent
observed: ‘It may be that the only sure ground on which a group can claim to
govern itself is by spilling its blood – successful prosecution of a war for indepen-
dence presenting the international community with a fait accompli’ (Vincent, 1974,
p. 381).

Mill’s ideas about permissible intervention in civilised nation states and interfer-
ence in barbarous places, and his view that empire was sometimes thrust upon
states have many modern counterparts, where countries seem unable to progress
to a more ‘civilised’ condition because of anarchy, the inability to peacefully settle
disputes and the vulnerability of its people to harm. The US involvement in Haiti
was partly triggered by boatloads of Haitians attempting to escape the lawlessness
in their country and arriving on American shores. Trusteeship for Liberia, where
barbarous practices are rampant, has been under consideration. For instance, rape
is commonly committed there by all sides, sometimes against the same victims
(Sengupta, 2003).

One of Mill’s great strengths is that his views derived from his close attention to
what actually worked. Rather than proceeding from an abstract idea of the good,
he carefully noted the notions and practices that cohered. He supported national
self-determination and its corollary non-intervention, by and large, because he was
convinced that it tapped sources of long-term order, stability and peace. Although
INTERVENTION AND EMPIRE 637

the notion of national self-determination is riddled with conceptual and empirical

difficulties, (French and Gutman, 1974; Vincent, 1974, p. 381; McMahan, 1996),
we would have to invent it if it did not exist. It would be impossible to compre-
hend our contemporary dilemmas without it, or Walzer’s more modest notion of
‘local legitimacy’. Some such notion provides an indispensable point of reference
and locus of responsibility. The cosmopolitan denial of the moral standing of states
ushers in nightmarish scenarios more horrifying than any that Mill anticipated.
Although, as Mill conceded, it is impossible to avoid intervention and interference
altogether, he is arguably right to insist that they should be clearly seen for the
conceptually, politically and morally equivocal enterprises they are. On the one
hand, there are bound to be circumstances where the case for intervention or inter-
ference seems compelling, but, on the other hand, as Mill appreciated, interven-
tion and interference are the most problematic weapons in the foreign policy
arsenal. Today, interference, which typically follows humanitarian intervention,
prominently figures in international relations, but as Mill held, there is no real
knowledge of how to effectively interfere. According to John Gray
... [P]retty well everyone recognises the need for state-building. The
trouble is that, whilst something is known about why states fail, much
less is known about how to build them; and where such knowledge exists
it suggests policies that no western state has the ability to implement
(Gray, 2004, p. 48).
Moreover, we not only lack the ability to effectively meddle, we also, as propo-
nents of intervention and interference often forget, lack the political will, which is
evident in Sudan, Rwanda and the Congo, creating a telling disjunction between
theory and practice. Because the repercussions of intervention and interference are
so hard to anticipate, the justification of intervention and interference becomes
doubly onerous.
Mill’s views do not provide the gratifying vision of world order that many seek,
but they arguably help us think more clearly about the more modest kind of order
that may be viable. According to Jackson, both Hedley Bull and Martin Wight urged
more attention to the ‘terrible choices’ and ‘agonising decisions’ that fall to states-
men (Wheeler, 1996, p. 124). Mill’s concerns provide the stuff of many of their
most tormenting choices and decisions.
(Accepted: 6 May 2005)

About the Author

Carol A. L. Prager, Department of Political Science, Social Sciences Building, Room 756,
University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4, Canada; email:
calprager@shaw.ca

Notes
1 Vincent, 1974; Bull, 1977; Jackson, 1990; Wight, 1991; Rengger, 2000.
2 Walzer, 1980; 1995; 2002; 2003. See also Mandelbaum, 1994.
638 CAROL A. L. PRAGER

3 According to the Oxford English Dictionary Online, the definitions of intervene include ‘to come between
in action’, and the definitions of interfere include ‘to meddle with; to interpose and take part in some-
thing, especially without having the right to do so ...’
4 Bain, 1882; Stephen, 1950; Himmelfarb, 1962; 1974; Mazlish, 1975 Semmel, 1984; Rosenblum, 1987;
Carlisle, 1991; Hamburger, 1999; Capaldi, 2004.
5 Mill, 1849, p. 347.
6 Mill, 1849, p. 343.
7 Mill, 1859a, p. 403.

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